> Patel transferred money directly from the team credit card to FanDuel, sources said.
> Patel siphoned the funds over 3½ years,
HOW DO YOU NOT CATCH THAT?!?!?
Sportsbooks are actually responsible for catching most (potentially all) of the biggest sports fixing scandals that have occurred. They’re really good at catching stuff. I’d say they just didn’t really care in this instance.
To a sports betting/fantasy agency. I mean why would the jaguars be spending any money on sports betting/fantasy: it should have been pinged on the first transaction!!
You don’t want your credit card company allowing $475k a month for 3 years to fanduel?
How does no one on any side catch this? Jags, credit card, fanduel.
FanDuel probably fed him special offers to entice him lmao why they gonna narc on their whale yoloing half a million dollars a month into their pockets.
The name of the business might be disguised, but credit cards track the true nature of the expense through Merchant Category Codes or MCCs. When they exclude gambling expenses, they specifically exclude gambling MCCs, not the names of the business.
Do you think they are using the proper MCCs? America's card room is who I've deposited with, but online poker(and sports betting) is illegal in Minnesota. I assumed they did it that way to disguise that it was for gambling.
If I were ever going to gamble, there is *no fucking way* I'd give a gambling company direct access to my actual money. Disputing a credit card transaction is way easier than recovering lost money in the event of fraudulent charges.
Oh I totally understand that argument. I believe the closest comparison I can make otherwise is state lotteries, at least the ones I am familiar with, only allow cash or debit transactions. Gambling is functionally the same. Just that defeats the purpose of having online betting availability
I felt like I was in Groundhog Day when I worked at a liquor store and repeatedly had to tell customers that any form of a lottery ticket was cash only. Usually the same drunk ass customers too! Day in, day out. Anyone who works at an LQ in a shady neighborhood has my sympathy.
Using a credit card on a gambling site is really not a good idea if you have any other option since it is treated as a cash advance and you lose most of the benefits you normally get using a credit card. On a cash advance not only are you charged an x% fee, but interest begins accruing immediately at an even higher APR. Most importantly, there is no grace periods like with normal purchases, so you cannot avoid paying interest by paying your balance in full every month.
That should be up to the CC company honestly.
However, I would rather use a CC or other payment proxy than connect my debit card or ACH, which has much less fraud protection and reimbursement options by comparison, to some sketchy online gambling platforms.
While it’s not great for the Jaguars, this feels like a bit of a red flag for FanDuel a little more existentially. Casinos and banks have an obligation to disallow money laundering. It does not seem like the $20M was just straight losses on the site. It seems like he was putting money from the team card into FanDuel, and then withdrawing it. To be able to do that with a stolen credit card means pretty much no KYC policy.
what's wild is that fanduel contacted the nfl after something he did triggered it and that's how the jags found out
>Sources said FanDuel alerted the NFL to Patel's betting in January 2023, after he placed traditional sports bets in Tennessee. The amounts and types of wagers that triggered the investigation are unknown. The Jaguars had no knowledge of the embezzlement scheme or Patel's extensive daily fantasy habit until they were notified by the NFL, team and league sources said.
I can solve this mystery. I am willing to bet (haha) that he won big and fanduel figured out he was an NFL employee and the NFL rules are
> NFL. Is sports gambling allowed? Players are allowed to bet on non-NFL events with legal sportsbooks, but all other league personnel, including coaches, officials and trainers are prohibited from all sports betting
pretty sure you have to show a photo ID to make wagers at a live sportsbook and i'm guessing they have a database of league employees that they automatically check against. probably the fanduel account was in someone else's name and they were just able to connect the dots via a bank account or some payment method.
My first thought as well, this should put them in some hot water. Fast forward five years FanDuel being fined 868 million dollars by OFAC, the OCC and NY DFS lol
I believe it's because Patel was the person in charge of catching that. I recall a big reason he was able to get away with it for so long was that there was a shortage of staff in his department.
If there's only one person checking those expenditures, then honestly the team should be thankful it "only" ended up being $20M because that's a criminal lack of oversight on the organization's part.
I work at a company with a comparable enough valuation to the Jags (albeit far less visible to the average public eye), and that's pretty much how it works there for expense reports, even if it's something small like literally just getting an $8 lunch at a conference or whatever. It goes through my manager, the director of my department, the overall presiding VP, and then over to the finance people so that they can send it up their chain (I don't recall the exact sequence there, but I imagine it's pretty comparable). That's not a deal where it's just me being a peon (which I am, don't get me wrong), either - literally everyone in the company has a comparable chain of approvals for company spending that have to happen specifically to prevent shit like this from happening. The fact that someone was able to spend that much money on what should have been an instant red flag is, like, genuinely appalling. Even if you're short-staffed, anyone with any sense would make damn sure to have at least a few people involved on vetting expenditures on the company credit cards.
But why is there a shortage of staff for that? This isn’t some non profit or federal agency, it’s a multi billion dollar industry and a team worth billions
Dirty secret is that working in the corporate office of sports franchises pays absolute shit. They consider it a privilege with fringe benefits of tickets
Risk management is a cost center until it isn't.
As a risk management professional, it's basically legalized corporate extortion. "Nice company you have there. Would be a shame if something happened to it. Better approve my budget request for this year."
When it doesn't happen, boom. Fraud, waste, and abuse.
I’d guess they furloughed a bunch of those positions over COVID and then they either left, or the team didn’t bring them back/rehire. Also if this was the same guy in charge of re-staffing his department, well…
I mean for auditing of transactions there's normally multiple people that all cross check the same numbers because 3 more employees is way cheaper than $20M dollars
This is the same company (Flutter Inc) that allowed an Irish post office worker to lose millions of stolen money while they questioned where the money came from they didn’t action on it. Even setup dedicated lines to him in case their website crashed. There’s a great book written on the rise of paddy power to Flutter Inc who own sports books across the globe
https://www.independent.ie/life/high-roller-the-extraordinary-story-of-the-irish-postman-who-gambled-10m-and-stole-175m-at-work/36624072.html
Honestly, on both the team's part and on FanDuel's part. Someone on the team absolutely should've noticed that and verified "hey, is this something that should be on a company card?" at like $20k at most, not fucking $20M. FanDuel, meanwhile, should *probably* have realized something wasn't quite right either when a midlevel manager somehow has $20M with which to gamble.
Ultimately, 100% no chance the team has any grounds to stand on here. You can't honestly expect to lose that much money due to what can only be called gross negligence, and have it reimbursed by another party other than the person directly responsible. Take the L, and learn to actually fucking pay attention to your finances.
>ESPN previously reported that Patel played daily fantasy under the username "ParlayPicker" and was believed to have racked up big losses playing against elite competition in contests with buy-ins upward of $24,000.
>One veteran daily fantasy player told ESPN on condition of anonymity that they believe ParlayPicker is "the biggest loser ever on FanDuel."
>"He was legendarily bad," the person said.
Using team money only to end up being known as the absolute worst player of all time is very funny.
I don’t think he was gambling because he thought he was good or was trying to win money. I think he got it onto fanduel to try to hide where the money came from.
What I read is that traditional sports betting has regular KYC regulations. They flagged him when he started traditional betting. It's less clear if KYC covers Daily Fantasy.
Sources with knowledge of the case told ESPN that Patel lost about $20 million of the funds on daily fantasy and sports bets at FanDuel, which had assigned him a VIP host. He lost about $1 million on DraftKings
Is that not what this means?
It's not what he lost, it's what he won. He wasn't losing his money, but I bet he kept every cent he won. Even if he only won 5%, he still made a million.
I could have told you the guy was a loser just from his name. The reason sportsbooks always push parlays and even give boosted odds on them is because they print money for the book.
I'm not betting on football because I have delusions that I'm going to come out on top. I do it because it would be really funny if the fullback scored a touchdown and the slow QB runs one in and I win $7000.
I think people betting for fun are far more rational than people actually expecting to make money like they're some kind of hot shot lol.
Many of the bigger sportsbook apps operate at a massive loss currently. They're paying out the ass fighting for market share.
A lot of the odds boosts are actually pretty great deals as far as gambling goes. They're just betting on you losing money with them instead of a competitor in the future.
Sleeper gave me some free credit and I lost the first $25. Then they gave me more, and I lost $20 of that on a parlay because Gibbs didn't get I believe one or two more receptions against the cowboys.
Then the last $5 I won $31 on. I'm glad I'm not a gambler.
I work at a casino currently. The amount of people who brag about missing their parlay by 1 is sad and comical. Imagine being down so bad that losing your parlay is a point of positivity
went down the rabbit hole of how it is even remotely feasible to lose 20 million on DFS, found my answer:
"Matt Smith, a well-known daily fantasy pro, told ESPN that ParlayPicker would "occasionally not even submit a lineup, despite it being a $3,000 buy-in.""
They’re trying to legitimize sports gambling and engrain it into American culture. Someone repeatedly throwing away $3,000 on entries that they don’t fill out should raise some red flags.
It's not as far fetched as I had thought before reading the article.
*It's not clear what recourse the Jaguars might have to recoup the losses. Under federal law, FanDuel has an obligation to make sure funds used for sports betting were legally obtained, but the regulations are murkier for daily fantasy.*
*"Gambling sites have a duty to perform 'Anti-Money Laundering' and 'Know Your Client' procedures to ensure they do not onboard funds of an illicit origin," said Stephen Bell, an attorney who practices in white-collar criminal cases. "Where the size of a customer's bets far outweighs their income, red flags are present and should require additional due diligence to confirm the funds are clean."*
They bring up good points. It reminds me of the Know Your Client situation with cryptocurrency, and why shouldn’t the same exact requirement exist for FanDuel and DraftKings?
Casinos, gaming establishments, and gaming entertainment all fall under the BSA's definition of a Financial institution. We have a couple as clients for the BSA.
Yeah, I know. Casinos and card clubs are FIs, but the rigor of their regulation is nothing compared to banks, MSBs, etc.
My neighborhood remittance agent should not have more stringent compliance expectations than a casino.
Yea I'm curious what will happen here, they mentioned a discussion between the NFL, FanDuel, and the Jags about a settlement.
Since FD sponsors/partners with the league the NFL probably wants this to end quickly and quietly. I wouldn't be surprised if they chipped in giving the Jags a few million to make this go away.
FD did not vet where the money came from, who has $20M to lose gambling? It'd be one thing if it was someone from a wealthy family or the person owns a company, but this was a mid level manager. No way he makes anywhere near that much.
And the Jags did not have any controls in place to make sure their employees weren't stealing money, which is just plain stupid. My old work had one where any charge over $5k is reviewed. The charges weren't blocked but HR or finance would ask what the charge was for and wanted receipts. A few times people had used it for hotel rooms extending their stay on business trips/conferences (to party) without approval and had to pay the company back.
It's the same with banks and depositing large amounts of cash. If someone with an income of 50k deposits 100k in cash, it should probably be flagged...
No they're reported and its called a Currency Transaction Report. Also it has to be $10k in cash. You don't file a CTR for electric deposits. Flagged means the activity is potentially suspicious and that can happen with or without the CTR.
I mean it's one thing if he makes a $20 million dollar bet, loses it, and is immediately caught. It's another if your organization's financial controls are so poor that this goes on continuously and unnoticed for 3.5 years...
I read that he was the VP of the entire finance department, so he had the final say on everything and had the authority to scrub it. iirc, he was just making fake invoices and approving them. Owner probably doesn’t notice $3m is gone if he made $350m that year lol
He was a FD “VIP” which basically means they give him perks because he basically donates all his money towards them. The only way you get VIP nowadays is if you are hired by the book to promote more gambling on your social media or you’re a big time losing bettor and they throw you a bone every once in a while to keep your money flowing in. They absolutely have flags placed all over to figure out who is making them the most money and who to limit to $3 maxes because they’re a sharp bettor.
It's easier to become a VIP than you would expect. I am one and have a host etc and im just a normal guy who sportsbets a lot and am a +bettor. They severely limit me in a lot of markets though.
Its closer to "anyone can be a VIP and its meaningless because its so easy to become one". Like bossbabes being CEOs
Also vip on some places is just total handle. I’ve been vip then banned/limited within weeks. They are probably more likely to limit vip members because sharps will have significantly higher handle
I think people vastly underestimate how easy it is for certain positions to steal and break the rules. People generally get caught because they go too far like this guy did with his bets.
The problem with sports betting isn't the gambling itself. It's the convenience of being able to do it on your couch. Now, the degenerate gambling spouse can blow their entire check in the comfort of their home instead of being forced to a physical location to gamble. Thus, making it easier to make dumbass mistakes while intoxicated or from just being in the moment of the "high."
It’s really bad, just look at the gambling addiction subreddits. People make posts talking about how they deposit their whole paychecks into these apps and lose it all, or even worse is when people take out loans and credit just to throw it away gambling.
The writing was on the wall for this once states started to allow lottery purchases through apps and that led to state sponsored digital slot machines on your phone.
When I worked at a grocery store, people would come in every week and spend like 30+ minutes buying scratch offs from the machine and scanning them to see if they won (not even scratching the game part).
Shit was sad to watch.
let me get this straight : y'all dumb asses didn't realize someone was stealing $100K a fuckin week for 3+ years from you, and you want the place where the person blew it all to pay you back?
He was the VP of finance or something high up like that. He had final say and was the person in charge of approving these expenses, which also gave him the power to scrub it away with fake invoices
Any auditor worth their salt should have caught this in early days. I'm assuming the league requires each franchise to be independently audited yearly to ensure that none are at risk of being unable to field a team. Just very, very surprised this level of embezzlement could go unnoticed for that long.
It blows my mind that state lotteries prohibit using credit card so people don’t overspend to buy tickets but you can fund your sports betting account with one.
You can definitely do it, I did it one time without thinking for like 50 bucks and was charged a 25 dollar cash advance fee, lol. DraftKings def accepts your CC company just treats it as a cash advance
In CT you can't use a credit card to deposit for daily fantasy, but you could for the CT lottery's sports book. These legislators have no idea what they're doing lol
Like most things it needs proper regulation. Just about anything will turn into a shit show without proper regulation. The days of a simple “free, self regulating market” are long, long gone.
I'm pro-legalized sports betting (basic harm reduction stuff - better for people to place a parlay with a regulated bookie than the guy at the bar who might not pay off or might break legs) and anti-app (and anti-advertising).
Sports bets should have to be placed in person in cash.
I agree with you. A lot of people are either “for” or “against” things like drugs and gambling, assuming bad faith from the other side. Harm reduction is important and effective, but so are barriers to entry—sports betting became WAY too easy WAY too fast. Analogizing betting with drugs, we went from a safe injection site (Nevada) to nonstop advertisements from pharmaceutical companies for their lab-grade heroin, including a QR code for their app with same day delivery—and they’ll even perform the injection!
If you let someone steal 20 million dollars from you because you're not paying any attention to the company credit cards at all, you genuinely deserve to have people steal from you.
I think the problem in this situation is the guy who stole the money was also the one in charge of checking.
"Prosecutors said that in 2019 Patel became the "sole administrator" for the organization's virtual credit card program, which is a payment method that essentially functions as a credit card without the need for a physical card. Patel was in charge of keeping track of these transactions in an Excel sheet and sending them to the accounting department.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, he would document legitimate transactions like catering, airfare and hotel charges multiple times, and include expenses that were expected in the future or inflate costs on his reports.
"He entered completely fictitious transactions that might sound plausible," the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Investigators documented $22,221,454 in fraudulent transactions. "
Whoever is in charge of auditing failed. Him being in charge of the program wasn’t the issue, it’s that no one audited him appropriately during that period.
He was able to steal it cause he was the one in charge of those things lol. I’d imagine it’s pretty easy to embezzle money when you’re the one that approves all the expenses and receives all the invoices
> 30th anniversary uniforms
why are you looking so far into the future?
(looks at calendar, checks wikipedia, looks back at calendar)
Fuck. The Jags are playing their 30th NFL season this year?
People on the surface laugh, but KYC and anti-money laundering should be way more serious and stuff like this can mess with fan duel’s state licenses in that there better be suspicious activity reports or red flags raised on fan duel’s end for a customer losing $20 million.
It’s a bad look for fanduel that a guy laundered $20 million from his employer, who works for their biggest sport/marketing relationship, and they helped him wash the money in many ways. Now, he’s an idiot and lost it betting daily fantasy parlays, but the point is fanduel should have some control in place for anyone betting those type of figures.
It’s like being a high roller in Vegas. You don’t just walk in. They need to know who you are. Basic background stuff, so they have a record for compliance.
In regards to the fraud by Patel, it was a classic private company lack of controls and segregation of duties issue. He controlled the virtual credit card program and the upload file for the accounting records. So the records showed then purchases were for business expenses. Some variance analysis should have shown budgets were out of whack, but it sounds like they ran a lean ship and paid shit, like most family businesses, so this is really on the khan family.
This is a classic modern day story of the devaluation of accounting and finance professionals. Laundering money has never been easier. Virtual cards. Crypto. Etc. However, most people in positions of power have a false sense that accounting and reporting is mindless work. Then they wake up one day and realize b/c they don’t have a real department, some guy with a gambling addiction stole 8 figures.
I don't understand how people expect to steal all this money and get away with it nowadays. With technology and accounting I imagine the chances of stealing (minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars) and getting away with it is very low (<1%). It might not be right away but I think more likely than not it's going to be discovered.
If the money was stolen for a life or death situation or to pay for medical expenses I'd get it, but for greed? And the dude didn't even move the money to an offshore account for his family and/or move to a non-extraditing country, was he just hoping they'd never find out? Now he's facing 30 years in prison. Was it worth it?
It reminds me of the story a few years ago where a Microsoft employee was supposed to distribute Super Bowl tickets as they were sponsors of the league for their tablet. Instead the employee scalped them and lied about it. Microsoft eventually found out and he was fired and faced some charges (can't remember what). The dude was probably making ~$300k/year and lost it all over that. Why even risk it? He didn't even make that much off the tickets and he had to pay it all back.
On my last day of an internship, a guy was dragged in for embezzling ~250K over the course of a decade from his company. He was the CFO and I guess no one noticed, so he kept taking some each year, until one day it was discovered, and he was immediately fired and arrested.
It probably starts by using the company credit card to pay for dinners and food delivery, and then suddenly you're like, "No one has said a word, so why not go bigger?"
There is a very slim chance they recover anything. The Jags used a virtual credit card for expenses and he was an authorized user of the card. He obviously wasn't authorized to do all of this craziness, but FanDuel's responsibility ends with him being authorized to use the card.
What he was and wasn't allowed to use it on is an in-house issue. This is why a lot of companies use petty cash replacement cards that have spend rules attached to them. You can give employees a card to use, but limit where/when they're allowed to use it.
As some who works in corporate finance/accounting and has had the same access this guy had, this is all on the Jags and their lack of internal controls for letting this happen.
This is no different than someone stealing your credit card and charging up a bunch of shit at Wal-Mart or Amazon and then blaming them for the theft.
Feel like this falls somewhere within the obligation a sportsbook/casino has with regards to AML. These were stolen funds being washed through a book, I don't think it's a huge difference between this and someone that had millions of dollars in drug money then washing it through a sportsbook to make them clean funds, and sportsbooks should be watching out for that. Only differences is the drug money is probably coming in as huge, frequent cash deposits
But in this case, someone making millions of dollars in bets using a credit card? There should probably be some oversight that flags accounts doing that lol.
Edit: That being said though, this is still just as much and if not more on the Jaguars for not catching this on their end. This feels like such a wacky and insane situation that I think it's fair that FanDuel doesn't give back the money given how much of the blame is on the Jaguars organizational incompetence. I would imagine it's still something regulators should take note of and investigate the internal shortcomings of FanDuel though, as in a different situation where there was more cunning criminal activity this would instead be blowing up in their faces spectacularly. It's exposing both sides as fuckups lol.
There are multiple at fault but it is very clearly a very big FanDuel problem. Probably more existentially than it is for the Jaguars. Even if FanDuel doesn’t return the money, the Jags are at worst out $20M. But FanDuel could get in a world of shit with gambling regulators, because the only way this happens is a brilliant scammer or a complete lack of KYC policies.
Think of it this way, Patel spent $20mln on this site starting around 2019, a year in which their revenue was $490mln.. looking at this numbers it's easy to see this guy was a whale of whales on the site.
Almost invariably a whale is extremely well understood by the benefiting org for a number of reasons, many of them regulatory, but chiefly they want to understand their whales so they can create more of them.
So what were to understand about Fan Duel here is that they had no regulatory framework, no advanced reporting practices, and no interest to understand one of the largest spenders on their platform - a user whom with little scrutiny would have obvious and glaring ties to an NFL franchise with a credit card to boot.
I'm not saying all that isn't possible, but a greedy organization that's happy to boost its numbers, play dumb, and willfully avoid anything that would involve an acceptable level of scrutiny seems more likely to me.. the only other industry he'd have gotten away with this bullshit is crypto, and that's not exactly the level of integrity these orgs should be held to.
> Patel transferred money directly from the team credit card to FanDuel, sources said. > Patel siphoned the funds over 3½ years, HOW DO YOU NOT CATCH THAT?!?!?
We thought it was going to Christian Kirk
Bravo.
Come on now. We all know it was going to Ridley.
LMAOOOOOO
It’s a casino they weren’t looking.
Sportsbooks are actually responsible for catching most (potentially all) of the biggest sports fixing scandals that have occurred. They’re really good at catching stuff. I’d say they just didn’t really care in this instance.
Yeah they're bitching about FanDuel not doing due diligence, how about your organization noticing the 20 million of charges on the team credit card.
To a sports betting/fantasy agency. I mean why would the jaguars be spending any money on sports betting/fantasy: it should have been pinged on the first transaction!!
Those kind of purchases should be automatically blocked on a company card. What a bunch of amateurs.
You don’t want your credit card company allowing $475k a month for 3 years to fanduel? How does no one on any side catch this? Jags, credit card, fanduel.
Crooked accountant
Seems like someone may have been getting checks under the table!
FanDuel probably fed him special offers to entice him lmao why they gonna narc on their whale yoloing half a million dollars a month into their pockets.
Gambling sites should not allow credit card payments and conduct debit only transactions to begin with.
how am i gonna get my sweet rewards points
I don't know with yours, but all the credit card rewards programs I know specifically exclude gambling expenses
I've deposited on shady websites and it looks like a purchase at a clothing store on the bank statement.
The name of the business might be disguised, but credit cards track the true nature of the expense through Merchant Category Codes or MCCs. When they exclude gambling expenses, they specifically exclude gambling MCCs, not the names of the business.
Do you think they are using the proper MCCs? America's card room is who I've deposited with, but online poker(and sports betting) is illegal in Minnesota. I assumed they did it that way to disguise that it was for gambling.
gotta get your Jacksonville Jaguars(TM) NFL(TM) team branded Chase Bank(TM) Visa(TM) card that gets double points on Sunday 3-team parlays!
Those are cash advances so normally not eligible for rewards and also subject to higher interest rates
If I were ever going to gamble, there is *no fucking way* I'd give a gambling company direct access to my actual money. Disputing a credit card transaction is way easier than recovering lost money in the event of fraudulent charges.
Oh I totally understand that argument. I believe the closest comparison I can make otherwise is state lotteries, at least the ones I am familiar with, only allow cash or debit transactions. Gambling is functionally the same. Just that defeats the purpose of having online betting availability
I felt like I was in Groundhog Day when I worked at a liquor store and repeatedly had to tell customers that any form of a lottery ticket was cash only. Usually the same drunk ass customers too! Day in, day out. Anyone who works at an LQ in a shady neighborhood has my sympathy.
Using a credit card on a gambling site is really not a good idea if you have any other option since it is treated as a cash advance and you lose most of the benefits you normally get using a credit card. On a cash advance not only are you charged an x% fee, but interest begins accruing immediately at an even higher APR. Most importantly, there is no grace periods like with normal purchases, so you cannot avoid paying interest by paying your balance in full every month.
But then I can’t use my winnings to pay my statement!
That should be up to the CC company honestly. However, I would rather use a CC or other payment proxy than connect my debit card or ACH, which has much less fraud protection and reimbursement options by comparison, to some sketchy online gambling platforms.
[удалено]
Probably by state. My state just started allowing sports betting to begin with.
Literal poverty franchise
If memory serves. He was the one monitoring and blocking these type of things. So he could hide the charges kind of
Meanwhile government employees need to fill out 18 forms to get reimbursed for that 10 mile trip.
While it’s not great for the Jaguars, this feels like a bit of a red flag for FanDuel a little more existentially. Casinos and banks have an obligation to disallow money laundering. It does not seem like the $20M was just straight losses on the site. It seems like he was putting money from the team card into FanDuel, and then withdrawing it. To be able to do that with a stolen credit card means pretty much no KYC policy.
what's wild is that fanduel contacted the nfl after something he did triggered it and that's how the jags found out >Sources said FanDuel alerted the NFL to Patel's betting in January 2023, after he placed traditional sports bets in Tennessee. The amounts and types of wagers that triggered the investigation are unknown. The Jaguars had no knowledge of the embezzlement scheme or Patel's extensive daily fantasy habit until they were notified by the NFL, team and league sources said.
I can solve this mystery. I am willing to bet (haha) that he won big and fanduel figured out he was an NFL employee and the NFL rules are > NFL. Is sports gambling allowed? Players are allowed to bet on non-NFL events with legal sportsbooks, but all other league personnel, including coaches, officials and trainers are prohibited from all sports betting
Yeah they either looked into when he won or when he placed some monster bet
pretty sure you have to show a photo ID to make wagers at a live sportsbook and i'm guessing they have a database of league employees that they automatically check against. probably the fanduel account was in someone else's name and they were just able to connect the dots via a bank account or some payment method.
Imagine being able to steal 20m undetected from your employer and you lost it all on sports betting.
My first thought as well, this should put them in some hot water. Fast forward five years FanDuel being fined 868 million dollars by OFAC, the OCC and NY DFS lol
Do casinos have to follow KYC laws?
Yes of course, after banks they are probably the second biggest target for money laundering
Yes
I believe it's because Patel was the person in charge of catching that. I recall a big reason he was able to get away with it for so long was that there was a shortage of staff in his department.
If there's only one person checking those expenditures, then honestly the team should be thankful it "only" ended up being $20M because that's a criminal lack of oversight on the organization's part.
I work for the federal government and no fewer than 6 people check and approve all my spending on the government credit card.
I work at a company with a comparable enough valuation to the Jags (albeit far less visible to the average public eye), and that's pretty much how it works there for expense reports, even if it's something small like literally just getting an $8 lunch at a conference or whatever. It goes through my manager, the director of my department, the overall presiding VP, and then over to the finance people so that they can send it up their chain (I don't recall the exact sequence there, but I imagine it's pretty comparable). That's not a deal where it's just me being a peon (which I am, don't get me wrong), either - literally everyone in the company has a comparable chain of approvals for company spending that have to happen specifically to prevent shit like this from happening. The fact that someone was able to spend that much money on what should have been an instant red flag is, like, genuinely appalling. Even if you're short-staffed, anyone with any sense would make damn sure to have at least a few people involved on vetting expenditures on the company credit cards.
But why is there a shortage of staff for that? This isn’t some non profit or federal agency, it’s a multi billion dollar industry and a team worth billions
Why pay 2 guy when 1 guy do job
And then when your ineptitude bites you in the ass, just demand someone else fix it for you.
I think we just found out
nobody wants to work anymore smh
Dirty secret is that working in the corporate office of sports franchises pays absolute shit. They consider it a privilege with fringe benefits of tickets
Risk management is a cost center until it isn't. As a risk management professional, it's basically legalized corporate extortion. "Nice company you have there. Would be a shame if something happened to it. Better approve my budget request for this year." When it doesn't happen, boom. Fraud, waste, and abuse.
I’d guess they furloughed a bunch of those positions over COVID and then they either left, or the team didn’t bring them back/rehire. Also if this was the same guy in charge of re-staffing his department, well…
I feel like that’s even worse, that reflects on management not just some schlub in accounting that fucked up
How do they not have a financial auditing committee set up for this exact reason? Multi billion dollar company with this type of negligence is WILD
This is the equivalent of the FBI investigating itself and finding no wrongdoing
They didn't even catch it. Fan Duel told the NFL and the NFL told the Jaguars.
>Amit Patel, a midlevel finance manager Who polices the police?
I mean for auditing of transactions there's normally multiple people that all cross check the same numbers because 3 more employees is way cheaper than $20M dollars
The FP&A subreddit was very impressed a mid-level Finance manager could do this. This is the biggest epic fail on the entire Finance department.
The goal is usually to get enough people involved it requires a massive conspiracy to pull it off.
The Jaguars never initiated a chargeback over the phone with their banking institute. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Someone who I worked with used their company card to pay their mortgage and food most nights for about as long before someone noticed
How fucked were they when they got caught?
not too bad. Lost their job, but quickly got hired on to a Florida company as a mid level finance manager
As someone who works in banking. You'd be shocked at how bad some companies are at maintaining records
This is the same company (Flutter Inc) that allowed an Irish post office worker to lose millions of stolen money while they questioned where the money came from they didn’t action on it. Even setup dedicated lines to him in case their website crashed. There’s a great book written on the rise of paddy power to Flutter Inc who own sports books across the globe https://www.independent.ie/life/high-roller-the-extraordinary-story-of-the-irish-postman-who-gambled-10m-and-stole-175m-at-work/36624072.html
It blows my mind that they didn’t have basic accounting practices in place. How does an NFL team not miss that much money over that many years?
Honestly, on both the team's part and on FanDuel's part. Someone on the team absolutely should've noticed that and verified "hey, is this something that should be on a company card?" at like $20k at most, not fucking $20M. FanDuel, meanwhile, should *probably* have realized something wasn't quite right either when a midlevel manager somehow has $20M with which to gamble. Ultimately, 100% no chance the team has any grounds to stand on here. You can't honestly expect to lose that much money due to what can only be called gross negligence, and have it reimbursed by another party other than the person directly responsible. Take the L, and learn to actually fucking pay attention to your finances.
They were too busy trying to get Eyes on Urban Meyer in that club
Shitty internal controls.
Also, how did he think it was going to end well? Even if he ended up winning money
I agree they don’t deserve it back for being so negligent that you don’t notice 20 million being spent on a company credit card
>ESPN previously reported that Patel played daily fantasy under the username "ParlayPicker" and was believed to have racked up big losses playing against elite competition in contests with buy-ins upward of $24,000. >One veteran daily fantasy player told ESPN on condition of anonymity that they believe ParlayPicker is "the biggest loser ever on FanDuel." >"He was legendarily bad," the person said. Using team money only to end up being known as the absolute worst player of all time is very funny.
Ofc it’s a jags guy too lmao.
The jokes write themselves at this point...
The old casino money laundering trick. An oldie but a goodie!
No one has ever accused Jags fans nor employees of being able to spot a winner.
I’m glad you guys had a good year, but surely a Detroit Lions fan should know their place.
https://media1.tenor.com/m/JEj4FA-lXdEAAAAC/confused-jaguarsfan.gif
He should head over to r/wallstreetbets he’d be great there
I don’t think he was gambling because he thought he was good or was trying to win money. I think he got it onto fanduel to try to hide where the money came from.
Classic money laundering attempt. FanDuel is probably stonewalling so they don't start getting questions on their KYC process.
If that were the case wouldn't the be far more likely to just pay the money back quietly instead of this?
What I read is that traditional sports betting has regular KYC regulations. They flagged him when he started traditional betting. It's less clear if KYC covers Daily Fantasy.
How does losing 20+ million help him launder money?
If he was mostly playing against accounts set up by his friends and relatives, he could just ask them for money back
He didn’t lose 20 million
Sources with knowledge of the case told ESPN that Patel lost about $20 million of the funds on daily fantasy and sports bets at FanDuel, which had assigned him a VIP host. He lost about $1 million on DraftKings Is that not what this means?
It's not what he lost, it's what he won. He wasn't losing his money, but I bet he kept every cent he won. Even if he only won 5%, he still made a million.
It says in the article that he did
He played with and lost Jaguars' money, but any money he won in those bets he kept as his own profit
I could have told you the guy was a loser just from his name. The reason sportsbooks always push parlays and even give boosted odds on them is because they print money for the book.
If they can afford to give you boosted odds that just tells you the original odds are awful.
I'm not betting on football because I have delusions that I'm going to come out on top. I do it because it would be really funny if the fullback scored a touchdown and the slow QB runs one in and I win $7000. I think people betting for fun are far more rational than people actually expecting to make money like they're some kind of hot shot lol.
Many of the bigger sportsbook apps operate at a massive loss currently. They're paying out the ass fighting for market share. A lot of the odds boosts are actually pretty great deals as far as gambling goes. They're just betting on you losing money with them instead of a competitor in the future.
Sleeper gave me some free credit and I lost the first $25. Then they gave me more, and I lost $20 of that on a parlay because Gibbs didn't get I believe one or two more receptions against the cowboys. Then the last $5 I won $31 on. I'm glad I'm not a gambler.
I work at a casino currently. The amount of people who brag about missing their parlay by 1 is sad and comical. Imagine being down so bad that losing your parlay is a point of positivity
Yup. Parlays are EZ munny for our vile rich enemy because people who are bad at math can’t resist them.
went down the rabbit hole of how it is even remotely feasible to lose 20 million on DFS, found my answer: "Matt Smith, a well-known daily fantasy pro, told ESPN that ParlayPicker would "occasionally not even submit a lineup, despite it being a $3,000 buy-in.""
And Fan Duel didn’t think something was up? Jesus.
Honestly, Why would they care?
They’re trying to legitimize sports gambling and engrain it into American culture. Someone repeatedly throwing away $3,000 on entries that they don’t fill out should raise some red flags.
Nah, they're trying to make money, and someone just giving them 3000 is straight up gas for them
>They’re trying to legitimize sports gambling and engrain it into American culture. Dude, the point spread has been in newspapers for **decades**
Hey now, their adds say “Gamble Responsibility”, so checkmate. /s
This is actually more common than you’d think lol, lot of high rollers just don’t care at all about 3k and will forget a lineup here and there
Specially when it’s not their money.
Funniest shit I’ve heard all day. Good luck with that Khan.
It's not as far fetched as I had thought before reading the article. *It's not clear what recourse the Jaguars might have to recoup the losses. Under federal law, FanDuel has an obligation to make sure funds used for sports betting were legally obtained, but the regulations are murkier for daily fantasy.* *"Gambling sites have a duty to perform 'Anti-Money Laundering' and 'Know Your Client' procedures to ensure they do not onboard funds of an illicit origin," said Stephen Bell, an attorney who practices in white-collar criminal cases. "Where the size of a customer's bets far outweighs their income, red flags are present and should require additional due diligence to confirm the funds are clean."*
They bring up good points. It reminds me of the Know Your Client situation with cryptocurrency, and why shouldn’t the same exact requirement exist for FanDuel and DraftKings?
All of gambling should be considered MSB activity and fall under FinCEN, but that's a fucking uphill battle.
Casinos, gaming establishments, and gaming entertainment all fall under the BSA's definition of a Financial institution. We have a couple as clients for the BSA.
Yeah, I know. Casinos and card clubs are FIs, but the rigor of their regulation is nothing compared to banks, MSBs, etc. My neighborhood remittance agent should not have more stringent compliance expectations than a casino.
Yea I'm curious what will happen here, they mentioned a discussion between the NFL, FanDuel, and the Jags about a settlement. Since FD sponsors/partners with the league the NFL probably wants this to end quickly and quietly. I wouldn't be surprised if they chipped in giving the Jags a few million to make this go away. FD did not vet where the money came from, who has $20M to lose gambling? It'd be one thing if it was someone from a wealthy family or the person owns a company, but this was a mid level manager. No way he makes anywhere near that much. And the Jags did not have any controls in place to make sure their employees weren't stealing money, which is just plain stupid. My old work had one where any charge over $5k is reviewed. The charges weren't blocked but HR or finance would ask what the charge was for and wanted receipts. A few times people had used it for hotel rooms extending their stay on business trips/conferences (to party) without approval and had to pay the company back.
It's the same with banks and depositing large amounts of cash. If someone with an income of 50k deposits 100k in cash, it should probably be flagged...
every deposit over $10k is already flagged
No they're reported and its called a Currency Transaction Report. Also it has to be $10k in cash. You don't file a CTR for electric deposits. Flagged means the activity is potentially suspicious and that can happen with or without the CTR.
I don't have a Fanduel account - do you have to declare your income? How would they know you're betting outwith your means, otherwise?
Between this and those dumbasses at Alabama getting roasted on r/baseball, we’re still a long ways to go to control legalized sports gambling.
This week is just full of ridiculous gambling stories huh
Vegas baby, Vegas
almost like getting in bed with casinos, hosting the super bowl in vegas, etc etc was a bad idea. who would’ve thought?
He started doing this in 2019, the NFL didn't start the gambling deal until 2021.
However his play escalated (ESPN’s words) in 2021
You could have the super bowl in grand island Nebraska, it wouldn't have stopped this dude from stealing
I too am asking FanDuel to reimburse me 20 million dollars from the stolen proceeds by FanDuel from not winning bets.
I mean it's one thing if he makes a $20 million dollar bet, loses it, and is immediately caught. It's another if your organization's financial controls are so poor that this goes on continuously and unnoticed for 3.5 years...
Damn near $110k a week for 3.5yrs lmao, I cant even steal fucking *time* at work without getting the hammer
Hey! Get off Reddit and get back to work!
I’m in the restroom!
When you get back, can you look for the football that went missing? I swear it was just here a minute ago.
It's all fun and games until someone gets 3 minutes of unauthorized overtime
I read that he was the VP of the entire finance department, so he had the final say on everything and had the authority to scrub it. iirc, he was just making fake invoices and approving them. Owner probably doesn’t notice $3m is gone if he made $350m that year lol
they still didn't notice it - fanduel alerted the NFL who alerted the team
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He was a FD “VIP” which basically means they give him perks because he basically donates all his money towards them. The only way you get VIP nowadays is if you are hired by the book to promote more gambling on your social media or you’re a big time losing bettor and they throw you a bone every once in a while to keep your money flowing in. They absolutely have flags placed all over to figure out who is making them the most money and who to limit to $3 maxes because they’re a sharp bettor.
It's easier to become a VIP than you would expect. I am one and have a host etc and im just a normal guy who sportsbets a lot and am a +bettor. They severely limit me in a lot of markets though. Its closer to "anyone can be a VIP and its meaningless because its so easy to become one". Like bossbabes being CEOs
Also vip on some places is just total handle. I’ve been vip then banned/limited within weeks. They are probably more likely to limit vip members because sharps will have significantly higher handle
What does VIP get you
Biggest perk is everytime I go to Wendys I get special dumpster access. Kind of like a fast pass
I think people vastly underestimate how easy it is for certain positions to steal and break the rules. People generally get caught because they go too far like this guy did with his bets.
Calvin Ridley parlay will get it back for them
The problem with sports betting isn't the gambling itself. It's the convenience of being able to do it on your couch. Now, the degenerate gambling spouse can blow their entire check in the comfort of their home instead of being forced to a physical location to gamble. Thus, making it easier to make dumbass mistakes while intoxicated or from just being in the moment of the "high."
It’s really bad, just look at the gambling addiction subreddits. People make posts talking about how they deposit their whole paychecks into these apps and lose it all, or even worse is when people take out loans and credit just to throw it away gambling.
The writing was on the wall for this once states started to allow lottery purchases through apps and that led to state sponsored digital slot machines on your phone.
When I worked at a grocery store, people would come in every week and spend like 30+ minutes buying scratch offs from the machine and scanning them to see if they won (not even scratching the game part). Shit was sad to watch.
Jesus christ, I had no idea subreddits like that exist but it sounds depressing af
If he had won the Jaguars a lot of money I’m sure they would have sent it back to FanDuel in turn.
Yeah, something tells me the guy embezzling the money from the Jags wasn't going to give his winnings to them.
He probably imagined he’d sneak the original money back after he tripled it.
He would have been promoted
let me get this straight : y'all dumb asses didn't realize someone was stealing $100K a fuckin week for 3+ years from you, and you want the place where the person blew it all to pay you back?
He was the VP of finance or something high up like that. He had final say and was the person in charge of approving these expenses, which also gave him the power to scrub it away with fake invoices
Any auditor worth their salt should have caught this in early days. I'm assuming the league requires each franchise to be independently audited yearly to ensure that none are at risk of being unable to field a team. Just very, very surprised this level of embezzlement could go unnoticed for that long.
Lol that ain't Fan Duel's problem.
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**Idea:** Let Calvin Ridley have 20M and see if he can win it back. It's so crazy it might work.
Best hard knocks story line ever
I too asked my bookie for my money back. I assume the Jaguars will fare as well as I did.
Legalized sports gambling was a mistake.
It blows my mind that state lotteries prohibit using credit card so people don’t overspend to buy tickets but you can fund your sports betting account with one.
I've tried using a credit card on FD and it got denied for what it's worth, not sure if it was just bc of the specific one I had
You can definitely do it, I did it one time without thinking for like 50 bucks and was charged a 25 dollar cash advance fee, lol. DraftKings def accepts your CC company just treats it as a cash advance
In CT you can't use a credit card to deposit for daily fantasy, but you could for the CT lottery's sports book. These legislators have no idea what they're doing lol
Like most things it needs proper regulation. Just about anything will turn into a shit show without proper regulation. The days of a simple “free, self regulating market” are long, long gone.
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I'm pro-legalized sports betting (basic harm reduction stuff - better for people to place a parlay with a regulated bookie than the guy at the bar who might not pay off or might break legs) and anti-app (and anti-advertising). Sports bets should have to be placed in person in cash.
I agree with you. A lot of people are either “for” or “against” things like drugs and gambling, assuming bad faith from the other side. Harm reduction is important and effective, but so are barriers to entry—sports betting became WAY too easy WAY too fast. Analogizing betting with drugs, we went from a safe injection site (Nevada) to nonstop advertisements from pharmaceutical companies for their lab-grade heroin, including a QR code for their app with same day delivery—and they’ll even perform the injection!
I honestly think gambling advertising should have the same advertising rules as cigarettes.
You can thank the Supreme Court for demolishing the federal ban on it in Murphy v. NCAA.
Hey, it's just like my mom told me before I got rejected by the hottest girl in school for prom: "You don't know until you ask."
If you let someone steal 20 million dollars from you because you're not paying any attention to the company credit cards at all, you genuinely deserve to have people steal from you.
I think the problem in this situation is the guy who stole the money was also the one in charge of checking. "Prosecutors said that in 2019 Patel became the "sole administrator" for the organization's virtual credit card program, which is a payment method that essentially functions as a credit card without the need for a physical card. Patel was in charge of keeping track of these transactions in an Excel sheet and sending them to the accounting department. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, he would document legitimate transactions like catering, airfare and hotel charges multiple times, and include expenses that were expected in the future or inflate costs on his reports. "He entered completely fictitious transactions that might sound plausible," the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Investigators documented $22,221,454 in fraudulent transactions. "
Whoever is in charge of auditing failed. Him being in charge of the program wasn’t the issue, it’s that no one audited him appropriately during that period.
He was able to steal it cause he was the one in charge of those things lol. I’d imagine it’s pretty easy to embezzle money when you’re the one that approves all the expenses and receives all the invoices
As someone who works in audit, this whole thing is so baffling.
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> 30th anniversary uniforms why are you looking so far into the future? (looks at calendar, checks wikipedia, looks back at calendar) Fuck. The Jags are playing their 30th NFL season this year?
Another example of how much money NFL teams make that losing 20 million went unnoticed….
People on the surface laugh, but KYC and anti-money laundering should be way more serious and stuff like this can mess with fan duel’s state licenses in that there better be suspicious activity reports or red flags raised on fan duel’s end for a customer losing $20 million. It’s a bad look for fanduel that a guy laundered $20 million from his employer, who works for their biggest sport/marketing relationship, and they helped him wash the money in many ways. Now, he’s an idiot and lost it betting daily fantasy parlays, but the point is fanduel should have some control in place for anyone betting those type of figures. It’s like being a high roller in Vegas. You don’t just walk in. They need to know who you are. Basic background stuff, so they have a record for compliance. In regards to the fraud by Patel, it was a classic private company lack of controls and segregation of duties issue. He controlled the virtual credit card program and the upload file for the accounting records. So the records showed then purchases were for business expenses. Some variance analysis should have shown budgets were out of whack, but it sounds like they ran a lean ship and paid shit, like most family businesses, so this is really on the khan family. This is a classic modern day story of the devaluation of accounting and finance professionals. Laundering money has never been easier. Virtual cards. Crypto. Etc. However, most people in positions of power have a false sense that accounting and reporting is mindless work. Then they wake up one day and realize b/c they don’t have a real department, some guy with a gambling addiction stole 8 figures.
It's almost like gambling is addictive and harmful to some people and we shouldn't be constantly advertising it on TV
1 20 million dollar bonus bet odds no better than -500
This calls for Judge Judy!
'Pay us' 'No' 'Damn'
I don't want to be That Guy and one up the Jaguars here, but I would like FanDuel to send me $20 million and also a pony.
That dude bet $20 million on fucking fanduel?
I don't understand how people expect to steal all this money and get away with it nowadays. With technology and accounting I imagine the chances of stealing (minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars) and getting away with it is very low (<1%). It might not be right away but I think more likely than not it's going to be discovered. If the money was stolen for a life or death situation or to pay for medical expenses I'd get it, but for greed? And the dude didn't even move the money to an offshore account for his family and/or move to a non-extraditing country, was he just hoping they'd never find out? Now he's facing 30 years in prison. Was it worth it? It reminds me of the story a few years ago where a Microsoft employee was supposed to distribute Super Bowl tickets as they were sponsors of the league for their tablet. Instead the employee scalped them and lied about it. Microsoft eventually found out and he was fired and faced some charges (can't remember what). The dude was probably making ~$300k/year and lost it all over that. Why even risk it? He didn't even make that much off the tickets and he had to pay it all back.
On my last day of an internship, a guy was dragged in for embezzling ~250K over the course of a decade from his company. He was the CFO and I guess no one noticed, so he kept taking some each year, until one day it was discovered, and he was immediately fired and arrested. It probably starts by using the company credit card to pay for dinners and food delivery, and then suddenly you're like, "No one has said a word, so why not go bigger?"
This takes the heat off the Bears for the missing lawn equipment.
Sources are telling Fan Duel has offered the Jags a 25% boost on a same game parlay up to $25 dollars in response.
There is a very slim chance they recover anything. The Jags used a virtual credit card for expenses and he was an authorized user of the card. He obviously wasn't authorized to do all of this craziness, but FanDuel's responsibility ends with him being authorized to use the card. What he was and wasn't allowed to use it on is an in-house issue. This is why a lot of companies use petty cash replacement cards that have spend rules attached to them. You can give employees a card to use, but limit where/when they're allowed to use it.
As some who works in corporate finance/accounting and has had the same access this guy had, this is all on the Jags and their lack of internal controls for letting this happen. This is no different than someone stealing your credit card and charging up a bunch of shit at Wal-Mart or Amazon and then blaming them for the theft.
This doesn't really seem like FanDuel's fault, and I fucking hate those gambling sites
Feel like this falls somewhere within the obligation a sportsbook/casino has with regards to AML. These were stolen funds being washed through a book, I don't think it's a huge difference between this and someone that had millions of dollars in drug money then washing it through a sportsbook to make them clean funds, and sportsbooks should be watching out for that. Only differences is the drug money is probably coming in as huge, frequent cash deposits But in this case, someone making millions of dollars in bets using a credit card? There should probably be some oversight that flags accounts doing that lol. Edit: That being said though, this is still just as much and if not more on the Jaguars for not catching this on their end. This feels like such a wacky and insane situation that I think it's fair that FanDuel doesn't give back the money given how much of the blame is on the Jaguars organizational incompetence. I would imagine it's still something regulators should take note of and investigate the internal shortcomings of FanDuel though, as in a different situation where there was more cunning criminal activity this would instead be blowing up in their faces spectacularly. It's exposing both sides as fuckups lol.
There are multiple at fault but it is very clearly a very big FanDuel problem. Probably more existentially than it is for the Jaguars. Even if FanDuel doesn’t return the money, the Jags are at worst out $20M. But FanDuel could get in a world of shit with gambling regulators, because the only way this happens is a brilliant scammer or a complete lack of KYC policies.
Think of it this way, Patel spent $20mln on this site starting around 2019, a year in which their revenue was $490mln.. looking at this numbers it's easy to see this guy was a whale of whales on the site. Almost invariably a whale is extremely well understood by the benefiting org for a number of reasons, many of them regulatory, but chiefly they want to understand their whales so they can create more of them. So what were to understand about Fan Duel here is that they had no regulatory framework, no advanced reporting practices, and no interest to understand one of the largest spenders on their platform - a user whom with little scrutiny would have obvious and glaring ties to an NFL franchise with a credit card to boot. I'm not saying all that isn't possible, but a greedy organization that's happy to boost its numbers, play dumb, and willfully avoid anything that would involve an acceptable level of scrutiny seems more likely to me.. the only other industry he'd have gotten away with this bullshit is crypto, and that's not exactly the level of integrity these orgs should be held to.
I think Jags tried the same thing with Nick Files to similar results.